Human
by Nautical Acronym
Summary: She came from this and for all her human thoughts and logical motivations humans had been animals first.


Disclaimer: I do not own Portal, Portal two or any of the characters within. They belong to valve and their affiliates. I am not making any money from this.

AN: Did some late night writing again. I would be interested in hearing you thoughts and feelings on this. If you have some advice do not be shy! Please let me know as I am always looking to improve. :)

**Human**

The morning was cold as they both set out for wood; the faint light coming from the east was only a glow and the stars above were dissolving with the rising of the day.

They cut across a nearby field leaving footprints in the frosted grass.

This was a ritual made of need, kept because it was essential, but most of all enjoyed by the odd pair because it was the life that they were building.

Wheatley's tall and awkward frame pushed a wheelbarrow across the uneven plot of land, bumping and swerving with its grade. Two axes and some splits clattered around the bottom of its bin, clanking with each jostled step. The metal and the air were cold, his mitted hands and sweater only doing so much to keep away its permeating sting from his sensitive, synthetic skin. He trailed only a short distance behind Chell who's shorter stature moved with a more determined stride as they neared the edges of the forest.

This had all started years before when they had decided that the city was not suitable for living. The metropolitan's hollowed towers would catch the wind and howl for days on end. There wasn't anything alive there, but there was plenty dead; too much to find any sort of peace. The fractured architecture of its decaying shape was more dangerous than anything beyond its limits.

They pressed on into the countryside and were fortunate enough to find a cabin virtually untouched by the passage of time. It was a little thing composed of wood and nails hammered by tradesman long since gone like everyone else.

The wheelbarrow came to a wobbly halt just beside the looming woods.

They set to work immediately; Wheatley's first few attempts at felling trees had been disastrous, his inhuman strength had needed to be dialed back. He had assumed (quite wrongly) that the harder he hit the trunk the better his axe would chop. The first three axes had all met a terrible fate; their wooden grips splintering and metal heads lodging firmly and permanently in the offending trees.

He got the hang of it eventually.

They hacked away at two of the trees, leveling and splitting them. This work took hours, but they lunched between the steps and though he didn't eat, sleep, or even rest, he would sit with her as she swept away the beads and sheen of sweat across her brow.

There was nothing particular about this day; it was as so many were. They sat together on freshly cut stumps watching as the sun lit up the sky and warmed the grass. Steam would rise from the colder spots and from the useless logs across the field; the mist which wafted off of them would simmer in the warming air. The frost melted and the ground softened.

She sat beside him like an animal in human clothing.

It was a bizarre change in perception. In the span of a single moment he could go from being beside a trusted friend to being next to a stranger who seemed as foreign to him as the trees and as unpredictable as anything from _out here._

It wasn't that she looked different. No, he ran several scans to account for her variation, but there was nothing to explain it. No real difference to make clear her sudden otherness which came and went and could be seen on most mornings, but not all. She never acted differently either, but looked out into the middle ground at something he couldn't see.

He hadn't any language to describe this change and the few times he had attempted explain it to her she had merely quirked her brow at him. She couldn't offer him any words on a normal basis so how he expected her to know this secret word (it must be a secret as it wasn't in his files) was beyond him.

Were other humans affected by this too? He didn't know. The humans he had observed in Aperture had all been at work, busy, deep underground in an environment made of polished metal and white paint. There was nothing natural about the place even if it was natural to him. He was a product of it.

A light (quite literally) went off in his head. It was somewhere just below his eye and near the back but it was there and flicking with sudden understanding.

He was a product of his environment and so was she; or at least, humans were.

He looked at the grass stiff and wet beneath his booted feet and glanced at the trees bending up into green canopies: homes for birds and squirrels and other things. The earth was quite solid beneath him and the sun was now stretching and yawning deep.

She _came from this_ and for all her human thoughts and logical motivations humans had been animals first.

Was this a left over, he wondered, some sort of bleed through or by-product from a time in human history before they got their strange ideas and started launching themselves across oceans or into space? Before they looked at each other and could understand that what was happening in them might be happening in someone else too?

He felt stupid for thinking about it, as if he had done something wrong by imagining people thousands of years ago walking across this little field without language, but still _understanding_ it; someone like Chell, vibrating and pulsing with the feel of it.

It was patently silly, he decided. He had spent a lot of time around humans and they all seemed normal to him. There weren't two people living in one person like with Chell (or maybe she _was_ really brain-damaged and he should be watching out for that) but just one person, clear and logical. They didn't have this other half; this unnamed brother like Chell did who seemed to look out of her eyes from time to time and who was just so uncomfortably _different _that the sight of him was off-putting. Humans didn't come from nothing and they had always been different; always been separated from nature because they _made_ things like coffee mugs and hats and _him_: _machines_. And then the machines in turn would go on to make things like coffee mugs and hats.

Wheatley knew exactly where he was from. He knew the date he was made, where his casing components had come from and the name of every scientist who had contributed to his programming. He also knew the history of the project, how many times it had been proposed and the number of meetings which had been held in order to finalize the whole operation. There was no great mystery. He came from Aperture and his programming though alterable was always very clear. His purpose changed on several occasions, but once that purpose was programmed then there wasn't anything to question.

But as she swiped her hand across her face again, he wondered.

He was made by humans and, whether he thought it silly or not, they had seemed to come from nothing; bursting from the woods with these strange ideas.

Humans didn't have a serial number or the names of twenty scientists logged in a service file explaining which bits were what and how it was all meant to operate.

They were different and they didn't know why and separated from something but with its unnameable force still crawling in their brains.

He looked again at the trees watching as a bird hopped from branch to branch.

_Maybe_, he thought, though the idea was slow to come and difficult to shape, _maybe I'm _not_ so sure._

He was a realized human thought, wrought by human hands and perceived in the human mind; designed at every step by a creature that had millennia ago lived as the animals do.

Maybe he too was an animal. An animal in synthetic skin and just as lost.


End file.
